Aussies tired of Mahathir rudeness, Bill Hayden says
Aussies tired of Mahathir rudeness, Bill Hayden says
SYDNEY (AFP): Former Australian Governor-General Bill Hayden
fueled the row he sparked last week with his charge that some
Asian countries practice racism by repeating it and accusing
Malaysian leader Mahathir Mohamad of rudeness.
Refusing to recant his earlier criticism, he also revealed he
had personally advised former prime minister Paul Keating not to
back down after calling the Malaysian prime minister a
"recalcitrant" for boycotting the 1993 APEC summit.
Many Australians were "heartily tired of Dr. Mahathir running
around being rude to Australia," wrongly accusing them of racism
when Mahathir's own country had institutionalized racial
discrimination with its Bumiputra policy, Hayden said.
"Why should Australia keep rolling over whenever Dr. Mahathir
barks at us on the issue of race?"
Speaking on a prerecorded television program due to be
screened later yesterday, the Queen's recently retired
representative said his comments about Malaysia and its leader
were wise and long overdue.
"Prime Minister Mahathir has been running round for many years
bluffing the government of this country...when he couldn't get
his own way, that we were racially discriminatory people," he
said.
"He invoked the old and long dead white Australia policy. The
fact is the countries in our region, or many of them, have
inherent racial practices, in particular Malaysia. I think it
does him good to be reminded of that."
Hayden touched off a storm last Wednesday by attacking
Malaysians, Indonesians, Chinese and Japanese, saying: "If you
want to see racism, racial intolerance, look at some of our
neighbors, neighboring Asian countries."
Indonesians, he said, did not trust the Chinese, Mahathir
administered a policy which institutionalized racial
discrimination against the Chinese, the Indians of Malaysia were
largely "dirt poor," Chinese were racial supremacists and
Japanese were racial exclusivists.
Indonesia responded by calling Hayden irresponsible and
Malaysian MP Ruhanie Ahmad described him as "unscrupulous." But
Mahathir said he would not allow a "frustrated politician" to
sour ties with the new Australian government.
Hayden, governor general for seven years, said yesterday that
the relationship between Australia and Malaysia was only fragile
because of the way Mahathir behaved when it suited him.
"What has happened is a douche of cold water has been thrown
across certain of the leadership of Malaysia and that has been
overdue," he said.
"What I have said has been said many times by the Far Eastern
Economic Review and in fact in considerable analytical detail."
He said he had been shocked to discover, as foreign affairs
minister in the Labor government under Prime Minister Bob Hawke,
that Malaysians comprised 60 percent of foreigners who came to
Australia to study under aid programs.